Fasnacht (also called Carnival) is an event that is celebrated throughout Europe to scare away winter. In Basel it is a traditional ceremony that begins with a parade on the Monday after Ash Wednesday at 4:00 AM. It is musical mayhem with over 10,000 people in costumes, drums and piper troops. When the church clock strikes 4 all the lights in the city go out and the masked torch lit parade begins.So we decided to check it all out and made the trip into the city along with about 100,000 other people. Picked up Zach (Stryker colleague from Nice) at the airport at 11:00 PM, then had some really yummy Lebanese food, stood out in the rain in the dark, finally got to observe the most random and bizarre conglomerate of costumes and chaos first hand from the sidewalks of the Marketplatz.
It was totally cool.
T&M
